Kare kare Kojahey

The mehendi ceremony on the 27th, kicked off the start of the grand festivities, it felt so exciting and right to have it at home - plus the last of our friends had arrived - Ed, Tom, Clare, Ella, Glyn, Lauren and Alisha. We had been practicing our mehendi dance for a few days and amazingly our Uk crew were up for it (even the boys). Rukshana, Minha and Nadiyah toiled and slaved to get our back garden into festive mode and when it was done, I couldn't believe how absolutely fantastic it looked. While I waited upstairs to be escorted by my family to the "throne" in front of all the revellers, my female cousins chose my thaati and fastened the ancient belled foot anklets on my feet. It was pandemonium and super fun all the same. The women then escorted me down, hollering and clapping to signal my arrival.

Lee was taken to my cousins house and then driven in procession, finally arriving with all the male members of his and my family - they banged drums and tamborines while hollering loudly when they brought him in.

We were up most of the night dancing, having mehendi tattooed on our hands, belly's, feet and general body parts - even the boys go it done which was pretty amusing. Waking up the next day we found some had names on their bodies they had no idea how it go there! The party was started and everyone headed 2 hours down south to the wedding destination.

Two Happy Bazalgette's

And so, just like that, its all done! One absolutely fabulous month of festivities and I am now a married woman - an incredibly happy and blessed one at that. Lee is a wonderful husband and we are so excited... Still not used to being a Mrs, especially the part about changing my name - I am keeping my maiden name as a middle name... I am officially a Bazalgette!

The wedding was beautiful, we couldn't have asked for better weather - no blustery winds, the tide had gone out, the sunset was stunning and the atmosphere was lush. It was an incredibly emotional feeling seeing all your friends and family seated with tears in their eyes, watching our ceremony... I still can't believe we got all 35 of our friends from the UK down. Lee and I will never forget it.



My parents worked so so so so so hard on our wedding, it is definitely impossible to put down into words how much they did, and I am so blown away by their love and generosity and enthusiasm. Everytime I tried to say lets just leave that detail aside, they refused and got it done somehow.



We had the ceremony at 5pm right on Ahungalla beach, and then all our guests were ushered into another part of the land where they cocktailed it while we had our pictures taken by the most fantabulous Mere. She is such a star - what an incredibly talented photographer and how lucky we were to have her there.



The wedding party, with food, drinks and champagne flowing - went wonderfully. The speeches were great (Dias, Dad, Tom and Tash) and Lee's speech was so perfect too. It was so amazing to see all my Sri Lankan friends from childhood and now, make it all the way there for our special day too - it made us feel so lucky.

One thing though, there was something very important that happened that I was not aware of until after I had made my speech which is unfortunate as I would have made sure all the others knew. I noticed that the marquee was a bit warm even though it was open on all sides and faced the sea, and that there were no fans even though our loopy marquee lady knew we needed them. When I asked my cousin, I found out that it was my family - my many wonderful cousins and uncles and in-laws who worked all day long building the dancefloor and wiring the marquee and built our ceremony platform and everything. To make it all happen. I couldn't believe what they had done for us. It made all the little details even more special.

Hurray for family.